Oculus Animi Index
by rannadylin
Summary: Isabela says he has pretty eyes. Hawke sees more than that. In stolen glances she looks for his soul. Written for my Sententiae Latinae Tumblr meme.


_**Oculus animi index.**_ The eyes are the window of the soul.

I.

"You have pretty eyes," Hawke hears Isabela purr, distracting Fenris from whatever he was trying to ask her.

"I...have pretty eyes," Fenris repeats, bewildered, effectively distracted. Hawke sneaks a glance back at the pirate and the elf, likewise distracted. Isabela, she thinks, has a point.

"You elves have such pretty eyes," Isabela elaborates, "even the men. It makes me want to pluck them out and wear them as a necklace."

"I wouldn't suggest trying," Fenris counters, and Hawke hides a smile as she turns back to look where she's going.

II.

She becomes mildly obsessed with his pretty elf eyes.

Though _pretty,_ Hawke defies Isabela in her thoughts, is hardly the right word. Pretty is for...well, apparently for plucking out to string on a necklace, and she would thank Isabela to never have planted _that_ image in her mind, but it still makes her chuckle to think of it.

Nor is _beautiful_ the word she seeks. For all that he abhors magic and mages, there is something of magic in Fenris' gaze. Perhaps it is only because of how difficult it is to actually _hold_ his gaze. Hawke notices, now that she is paying attention to his eyes, how seldom they will meet hers. When he speaks, he looks away. A window. The floor. His gauntlets, the bottle of wine. His eyes flick to her and away again, never quite meeting her own.

She stores up the memory of his pretty elf eyes piece by piece, angle by angle, never a direct stare, never a lasting gaze. From this side they are a moss green, in that light there is a hint of hazel, in the bright sunlight that day on the Wounded Coast when she surreptitiously watches him staring up at the clear skies like one who had forgotten the sun existed, they seem to radiate the light as easily as she has seen his markings do when he bursts into movement in a fight.

Once, walking with him in Lowtown after midnight, she sees the light of a torch _reflected_ from his eyes, and starts in surprise at the reminder that these pretty eyes are something so _apart_ from all that she knows. It only makes them...she won't say _prettier_ , she has already decided that is not the right word. _Deeper._ _Truer._ If the eyes are the window of the soul, what is she seeing through them in these glimpses from the side? What would she see if she could meet his eyes straight on?

III.

His eyes are full of fire as he speaks of Hadriana, of the hate he cannot relinquish. As she reaches for his arm, finds herself between him and her wall, she sees a spark of something - he meets her eyes, for once, and flame engulfs them -

She finds his lips, instead, and seeks his soul there.

He will not meet her gaze again, after. "Forgive me," he says, vanishing even as she tries to fix in her memory the sight of his eyes meeting hers, just that once. The image starts to fade; all she can see now is the pain in his fleeting glances as he left her room, his pretty elf eyes empty of the happiness he sought with her.

IV.

She does not try to meet his eyes again for a very long time. She does not see, therefore, what has become of them since that night. Merrill sees it first. Coming back from scouting ahead during an excursion to Sundermount, Hawke hears her Dalish friend giggling, teasing Fenris: "Everytime she looks away, you stare at Hawke with those sad puppy eyes."

"There are no puppy eyes," Fenris growls; but Hawke's own eyes are wide with enlightenment. _Can it be?_ She starts stealing glances at him again, studying his eyes out of the corner of her own, looking for his soul again.

Merrill was not mistaken. Still he won't meet her gaze, but again and again she catches him looking away when she turns toward him, eyebrows furrowing to hide a longing gaze. Hawke hopes.

V.

Danarius dies; Fenris finds himself alone. "I'm here," Hawke says, and he _looks_ at her, eyes so open. She has not seen his soul so clearly since…

He backs away, the moment broken, and there are things to do, but she does not forget _this_ glimpse behind his eyes. And when she next seeks him out, his eyes open to a future at her side and it is _he_ who finds _her_ lips.

"Your eyes," she tells him later, "are... _profound_." He scoffs, but she thinks she's found the right word at last. "So expressive." He looks at her (he is learning to hold her gaze, after all this time) and she grins at all that she can read there. Maybe it's just that she has had so much practice over these years of stolen glances?

"Hawke," he sighs in that way that is both scolding and fond; he doesn't need to say more, for his eyes say so much in every glance. He draws her in to another kiss; if this is how he now chooses to break her gaze, she does not complain.


End file.
